ESL Dallas | The Surprising and the Disappointing

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Published on: 05/06/2017

When G2 Esports won the ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals on last Sunday, it was the end of a great event, full of surprises, both for good and bad.

On group A, the 2 French teams (EnVyUs and G2) started off great with 2 back to back wins each against SK Gaming, Fnatic and Immortals. But for Cloud9 the situation was grim: After losing to Immortals, the second underdog team in its group, the team lost 2 more consecutive matches against Fnatic and Envy. Out of the 5 matches Cloud9 played, they only won a single match against G2, and they were eliminated from the competition with a 1-4 balance.

But they didn’t suffer the most on the tournament:

Although considered to be an underdog, NRG Esports (On group B) managed to lose all of their 5 games, but came pretty close to defeating North on – losing on overtime.

The group stage was finished with G2 Esports and North advancing automatically to the semi-finals. On group A – Team EnVyUs and SK Gaming advanced to the quarter-finals, after they both won against Fnatic on the tie-breaker. On group B – mousesports and Team Liquid, 2 team considered weaker by some people than NaVi and Optic, who finished both with 2-3, not enough to advance.

On the quarter-finals, SK had a pretty decisive victory against mousesports, with 2 consecutive wins (16:7 and 16:8, on Mirage and Cache), and moved on to the semi-finals, to be matched up against G2, who automatically advanced to the semi-finals, after coming out in first place at the group stage.

The second match was between the teams EnVyUs and Liquid, with Liquid coming out on top after winning 2:1 (14:16, 16:10 and a pretty dominant 16:4 on Cobble, Train and Nuke). Liquid was sent to the semi-finals to face off against North, who also advanced automatically since they were first on their group.

Moving on to the semi-finals, both teams that have automatically advanced from the group stage managed to defeat the qualifiers from the quarter-finals 2-0 each: G2 taking SK with 2 16:12 wins (Cache and Overpass), and North taking out Liquid with a 16:5 and an overtime 19:17 win (Nuke and Mirage). G2 and North are going to meet each other at the finals!

On the finals North and G2 played against each other on the best of 5 format. The first map played was Cache, and ended with a 16:13 win for G2. Second map was Cobble, with a decisive 16:5 win for G2 again. On the third map (Overpass) North managed to win their only game in the series – with a close 16:14 win. The last (4th) map played was Inferno, and ended with another big victory for G2, concluding the event with a 16:3 win, giving G2 the championship in Dallas.

The Surprising:

On group A – The fact that 4 teams had a 3-2 win ratio – especially Fnatic, who had trouble getting by for a long time, managed to win against EnVyUs in the group stage.

On group B – mousesports, still shaken up from the loss of NiKo managed to pull themselves through the group stage with a fantastic 4-1 balance. Defeating teams considered way better like Optic and NaVi.

The Disappointing:

On group A – Cloud9 – Although not being the team many thought will win the tournament, Cloud9 disappointed many of the NA crowd, winning only 1 game against G2, and losing all 4 others in their group.

On group B – NaVi – The best team in eastern Europe, and one of the best teams in the world, won only 2 of their 5 games against NRG and Liquid, letting most of the eastern-European fans bitter.